Speech recognition technology, such as that developed by the IBM Corporation, has hitherto been finding its way into automotive applications. For instance, ATX Technologies, a telematics company based in Dallas, is incorporating 113M speech recognition system in Mercedes-Benz cars. In such a typical setup, the speech input is picked up by a microphone mounted on the ceiling of the car halfway between the driver and the front passenger positions and transmitted by a cellular channel to a remote server where the recognition takes place. The outcome of the recognition, e.g., a reply to an inquiry regarding a stock quotation, is typically generated by a text-to-speech synthesizer at the server and transmitted back to the vehicle via the cellular network as well.
An evolving need has been recognized in connection with being able to test conveniently the performance of this type of vehicular speech recognition setup. Just as car manufacturers routinely carry out quality control testing on the conventional components of a car, such as the air-conditioning unit or the ignition system, a need has oft been recognized in connection with subjecting to a given test regimen speech recognition systems such as those installed in vehicles. For example, a manufacturer could specify that speech recognition performance be checked on every one-hundredth vehicle or so coming out of the assembly line. This could thus confirm that manufacturing or installation defects are not compromising the quality of the recognition system.
Conventional test procedures have hitherto involved the recruitment of a pool of speakers who are driven in the test vehicle while they read a fixed script. The data are then transmitted to the server where speech recognition and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) computation are carried out to determine performance quality. There are a number of disadvantages to this process, however. Each vehicle to be tested needs to use a pool of speakers, likely making the process quite expensive. A separate person is needed to drive the vehicle, adding to the expense. If the set of speakers also changes from one test to another, the results will not be readily comparable to each other, as speaker variations will inevitably be introduced. Even if the speaker set is fixed, some inter-speaker variations are unavoidable from one trial to another, making the results difficult to compare and standardize. Other disadvantages, such as speaker error in reading the designated script, can potentially compound the aforementioned problems.
In view of the foregoing, a need has been recognized in connection with providing testing arrangements which overcome the shortcomings and disadvantages presented by conventional arrangements.